And All The Things We Never Say
by define-serenity
Summary: [Barry/Caitlin] "That's not a promise you can make," she says, the words she does utter chosen after careful deliberation – promises are lies too, words spun into those same hopes and dreams, curled around love and mutual trust, all things she can't afford any longer. (UNCHARTED VERSE)


pre-relationship Barry/Caitlin, pg, just something angsty oops

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 _ **And All The Things We Never Say**_

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The charcoal black of the body bag smells like the hospital chemicals from her childhood, her mom doing rounds at the hospital, the scent sharp and prickly in the corners of her eyes. There's something else sharp and prickly at the corner of her eyes now, tidal waves of tears she forces back because there have been too many as of late. So she zips up the bag, pushes the gurney forward and fits it in between two others that went into storage over the past four weeks.

They're running out of spaces to put them.

Blackout, Everyman, now this one, they're stacking up bodies like the coroner does at the Central City morgue and it isn't right.

The scuff of Barry's sneakers betrays his presence; this is something they do, she guesses, check up on each other to see how much damage was done, if there was any at all, a space they created together a long time ago for reasons they both understood like none other. They had similar wounds that opened and reopened at a moment's notice, a misplaced word, fresh trauma, an empty space where a person once stood. They've had this conversation so often they don't need to have it at all.

A defiant tear rolls down the length of her cheek, and as she sniffles her sorrow ripples throughout the entire room, her hand wiping at the salt run down her face.

"He kissed me, you know." She swallows thickly, eyes falling to the second ever body bag she'd zipped up.

"Who did?"

"The Everyman," she answers. "When he was you."

There's no need to talk about this, she'd let the moment pass after a few days, once she'd taken the time to understand her own disconcertion, but when Barry doesn't counter with _why are you telling me this_ , suddenly there's that pull in her chest again, like those first few seconds when Barry's lips touched hers and she'd still believed them to be Barry's lips.

"I kissed you–" No, "Him," No, " _You_ , back," she stutters through the whole ordeal going back and forth in her own scattered train of thought, her heart racing while more traitorous tears streak down her face. She thought it was Barry. She knows it wasn't. "I don't really know why, it's not like we were–"

"You don't have to explain," Barry counters.

"Don't I?"

She kissed Barry back with the possibility of Ronnie still there. Maybe she should have taken that as a sign, maybe it was her subconscious saying that if she could imagine a shadow of those feelings with someone else then she shouldn't have– but she did, she let Ronnie in again, she married him, she loved him harder than she thought it possible to love anyone– like Alex, like her mom–

A sob wrenches past her lips that echoes further back than she cares to admit.

Why do people insist on leaving her?

Barry shuffles a step closer. "Caitlin, you're hurting."

"I am not," she almost growls, even though she is, she's been ripped wide open and bleeding, it's like life decided to push a reset button to almost two years ago and if she allows the sadness inside she won't survive a second time. She whirls around and faces Barry. "I am _angry_."

Anger proved so much easier, and this time around she was allowed to be angry – Ronnie weaseled his way back into her heart with promises he didn't keep and seemed to have little trouble stomping all over their relationship. Why shouldn't she be angry?

"I am angry at Ronnie and the particle accelerator and Professor Stein and–"

"And yourself?"

She draws in a sharp breath, stopped short by the thought that yes, she's angry with herself. She's the one who lets people in.

"Cait." Barry comes closer. "This wasn't your fault. You are an amazing woman. You're kind and smart, and so incredibly beautiful. Any guy would be lucky to be with you."

She wipes at another tear and avoids Barry's eyes, because he's about the last person she can stand to hear this from. He's great at making her feel better when there are metahumans involved, when she's mourning a loss, not when–

"And anyone too stupid to see that isn't worth having in your life."

"Do you really believe that?" she asks, the ghost of two rings still staunchly haunting her left ring finger. "Or are you telling me what I want to hear?"

"Does it matter?" Barry asks, his brow moving quizzically around questions he's bound to have asked himself before. How many of these conversations have they shared? How many more will they have? How many more before they both realize the futility in trying to pull themselves up by the hand of someone on the ground all the same. Of course it matters. Lies won't get them anywhere.

"I've made mistakes," Barry says softly. "With you, with Cisco, with–"

Iris' name disappears into the abyss Barry appropriated for exactly this occasion, all the times he's reminded of her and the sting of abandonment leaves something to be desired – it's selfish of him, one of his less charming character flaws, but she gets it. She's appropriated a similar space for her own entitlement.

"In my experience it's the people who stick around who you need the most."

Like always there's a fault in his logic, an equation he made long ago between his secrets and Iris' that are in no way measurable or comparable; Iris thought of herself when she let Barry go, a conscious and maybe selfish decision, but equally incomparable to Barry's own. Iris did what she finally figured out to do. She has to stop adding stock to empty promises, start thinking about what she wants and who she chooses to love and not let–

But the thought of that makes the air thinner, strips some of the oxygen from her lungs.

What if that leaves her all alone?

"You're not gonna lose me."

She closes her eyes at the sound of those words, hanging hopes and dreams and her broken heart on a promise Barry can't make, a promise Barry shouldn't make, not after the last time he ended up on a gurney, his heart stopped, blood everywhere, a bullet lodged inside his ribcage. She thought she'd lost him then, another person ripped from her life alongside so many others and she'd sworn it wouldn't happen again. If she had to bind her life to theirs, if she had to sacrifice to keep them close, no cost was too small. She'd run cold with her own promise, ice in her veins every time she returned to her special project, her way of extending that promise to Barry. _I won't let myself lose you._

And then Ronnie left.

"That's not a promise you can make," she says, the words she does utter chosen after careful deliberation – promises are lies too, words spun into those same hopes and dreams, curled around love and mutual trust, all things she can't afford any longer. Her life is in shards on the floor, broken pieces of ice and glass with sharp edges no one should hazard close to; yet Barry does, and would every time, even if he wasn't able to heal.

Barry can say what he wants, he could even understand her pain the way he's picked his own apart these past fourteen years; she can't afford to let him any closer than he's already gotten. She cares about Barry, somewhere deep down she's sure she loves Barry, but she has to think of herself. If she speaks, if she hears the words, all the ones they don't say, she'll never be able to put herself back together again.

And speed and cold are opposites all the same.

One of Barry's hands curls around her shoulder ( _I wish there was something I could say_. _I wish there was something I could do_ ) and she replies _me too_ with the bare minimum of a glance, lips setting in a tight line. Maybe there is something Barry could say, something kind and meaningful she'd hear louder than every promise, every show of support, every trite and true condolence.

But he doesn't.

He knows her better than that.

She makes her way back to her workstation with a strange new vigor in her limbs, and opens an encoded file she named Anastasis two weeks ago. If there's any way to keep Barry safe, if there's one sure-fire way to stop him from dying, this might hold the answers.

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 _ **fin**_

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End file.
